- Joe Biden’s campaign said it has raised $38 million since the debate with Trump more than a week ago.
- The day after the debate, Biden’s team had raised $27 million, while Donald Trump had raised $8 million.
- Biden is recovering from a tough debate in which he appeared lost next to a rambling Trump.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign knows it took a hit in the debate with former President Donald Trump.
But Biden is fighting back, raising $38 million in donations since last Thursday’s debate, a campaign spokesman said.
“The reason people are going to joebiden.com and donating is because they understand that when you get knocked down, you get up and you keep fighting, and that’s exactly what the president has done,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler told hosts of MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Saturday.
Biden had raised $27 million and Trump had raised $8 million in the days following the July 27 debate, Business Insider previously reported. Trump appeared to win the debate, but both candidates made gaffes and delivered incoherent sentences.
Tyler added that the flood of donations after the debate marked “one of the most successful periods of the campaign so far” and that Biden is making the case that “he is the best person to take on Donald Trump.”
“Nobody is going to fight harder than him to beat Donald Trump,” Tyler said of Biden. “Compared to the other candidates on both sides of the aisle, he’s the only one who has actually demonstrated the ability to beat Donald Trump.”
Tyler said the Biden campaign plans to canvass 3 million homes in July and spend $50 million on paid advertising.
Since Biden’s first debate with Trump, the presidential race has been thrown into disarray by growing calls from Democratic colleagues and major donors for him to either convince the American people that he deserves a second term or field a new candidate.
According to the Washington Post, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia has called on his colleagues in Congress to urge Biden to drop out of the race.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings was one of the first major Democratic donors to call on Biden to end his campaign.
But Biden appeared to dismiss the gravity of his campaign’s woes in a recent interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
The president dismissed his debate performance as a “bad night,” rejected poll numbers that showed he was continuing to trail Trump and discredited rumors of a new Democratic candidate.
The Biden campaign has repeatedly touted the size of its donations, and Politico reported that it raised $127 million in combined funding from the Democratic National Committee in June, far surpassing the $112 million raised by the Trump campaign that same month.
Spokespeople for the Biden and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
